264 JOURNEY FROM which it was situated was uninhabited, from Mesurata to Alexandria, before the arrival of the Mahometans in Africa*.

It must, however, be confessed, that the half-starved Musselmen with whom he has peopled it were scarcely more deserving of our commisseration than the “ vastae Nasamon populator Syrtis,” or any other of the very respectable personages of antiquity who are said to have inhabited this coast. The Sicilians were most probably aware of the character of their customers before they exacted from them the hostages above described ; for Leo goes on to say, that these Arabs * Prhna che gli Ai'abi venissero in Africa fu il detto diserto dishabitato : ma poi che, &c.

There can be no doubt that the desert of Barca, here described, is the whole tract of country boi’dering on the Mediterranean, from Mesui’ata to Alexandria ; for, after having described Mesurata as situated on the coast, the author proceeds to observe — “ This desert (that of Barca) begins from the coniines of the district of Mesurata, and extends itself eastward as far as the confines of Alexandria, a space of about one thousand three hundred miles in length, and about two hundred in breadth.” The dimensions of Barca here given appear to be as singular as the description already noticed of it which follows ; for besides that the length is much too great, the two hundred miles of bi-eadth which is allotted to it would carry us far to the southward of Augila, into the desert of Libya, which does not seem, from other passages, to have been intended by Leo. We were ourselves, at one time, in passing along the eastern side of the Gulf of Syrtis, only four days’ journey from Augila ; and it then bore to the eastward of the south ; so that it could not be anything like two hundred miles from the coast, even reckoning from the most northern part of the Cyrenaica.

The place mentioned by Strabo in the following passage, as being four days easy journey from the bottom of the Syrtis, could scarcely be any other than Augila.

TETaTaiot/f ptEV oi/v (pas-tv asro rov f/.vy(pv r-ns piEyaXsir rovs xar cturo lA-aXocxuis ovTaj- MS E9TI %Ei/x£ivay avaVoXar apixvEisSat. Esti Se o tottos ovros s/J.(psq'ris tm A/aovi, (potvtxoTgo(pos- TE xai suvSos. — Lib. xvii. p. 838.

Procopius also (de .dificiis, lib. v.) makes Augila four days’ journey from Borium, (the Borium Oppidum, at the bottom of the Gulf.)